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Sri Lankan hospitality unaffected by Tsunami
Associated Press,
Mon January 24, 2005 00:54 EST .
KALAMATIYA, Sri Lanka - Although the tsunami turned this peninsula village along the southern coast into a ghost town, Sri Lankan hospitality cannot be stopped. One day last week, a man who used to live in the village climbed a tree, knocked down coconuts, broke them open on rocks and served them to visitors. People along the coast inexplicably break into smiles as they stand in the rubble of their former homes. Some act almost apologetic for having no place for visitors to sit. Whatever the hardships Sri Lankans will face as they rebuild their nation, many have shown they will do so with a generous spirit. They have also shown more than good manners: A German tourist, Gisala Haslinger, returned to this village to thank a fisherman who saved her by plucking her from the waters and placing her into his boat. But the tragedy can seem overwhelming. Two sisters, Mekhala De Silva, 19, and Medhini De Silva, 18, lost their most valuable possessions in the tsunami. They live near the sea in the southern coastal city of Weligama. The older one lost her prized artwork; the younger one, her precious books. "All gone," one said. But neither cared: what really hurt was the death of their 85-year-old grandmother. The young women and their mother, Kamala Waligamage, believe the stress of the disaster when the house filled with 4 feet of ocean water contributed to her death four days later. That is one family's story in one village, but this small spot east of the resort city of Tangala is merely one of many. A Woodbury man, Srilal Liyanapathiranage, visited Kalamatiya on Thursday, looking for a village he and a group of Minnesota Sri Lankans can help. This village is a possibility, though an environmental group has also expressed interest. The Dec. 26 tsunami destroyed all 31 homes. Personal belongings dishes, school backpacks, clothes remain where the ocean discarded them. Only nine of 104 villagers lost their lives. Many were away from the village, celebrating a Buddhist holiday in honor of a full moon. Others scampered up a rock, 75 feet or so above the village, to safety. Most of village life now revolves around a nearby Buddhist temple, nearly three miles inland along a rutted dirt road and bird sanctuary. Children at a preschool there don't like to hear the word "tsunami" any longer, a teacher said, and some no longer like the sea. Villagers have taken inventory of their losses in fishing boats, nets and other equipment, and compiled a wish list that would take $139,000 to satisfy. The other day, a group of area villagers met in the seaside building where a four-village government Fishing Services Center is located. A government employee started drawing up a list of lost items, a process that required fishermen to declare in the presence of others what he had owned. Liyanapathiranage met with the village leader and got an unwelcome estimate of $5,000 to replace each house double what he'd been told by government officials in Colombo. "It's increasing as it goes," he said. People sleep in the homes of friends and relatives. The government has said it will replace fishing boats and nets and rebuild the infrastructure electrical power, telephones and roads in the devastated regions. But it is looking for help in rebuilding houses, many of which were made of brick and were uninsured. The sad part, as Liyanapathiranage observed on his trip along the southern coast, is "a lot of villages got as destroyed as Kalamatiya." Distributed by the Associated Press
Published: Mon Jan 24 05:13:14 EST 2005
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Local family with ties to Sri Lanka sets up aid fund
